the tendency of making quick or inappropriate attributions.
Learning
Now, let us understand the term ‘learning’ and the various processes of learning. Learning is any relatively permanent change in behaviour that occurs as a result of experience. There are two important elements in learning:
a.Change must be relatively permanent. It means after ‘learning’ the behaviour of a person must be different from the previous behaviour. If a person learns car driving, it will last for a long time indicating the changed behaviour. Temporary changes may be only reflexive and fail to represent any learning. Therefore, this requirement rules out behavioural changes caused by fatigue or other temporary adaptations.
b.The second element is that the change of behaviour should take place as a result of some kind of experience. Learning must be because of some interaction with the environment and some feedback from such environment that affects behaviour. The experience may be direct or indirect. Sometimes we learn to change our behaviour when our colleagues are punished for that kind of behaviour.
You may note that learning itself cannot be observed. The behavioural changes consequent upon learning only can be seen. This kind of change in behaviour should be differentiated from change in behaviour caused by other factors. For example, aging may cause behavioural changes. A change in the individual’s thought process or attitudes, if accompanied by no change in behaviour, would not be learning.
Learning certainly has its own impact on training activities in an organization. It can give insights into how to best develop the skills and talents of employees for performing the jobs effectively. But it is the desire to change individuals that is of the greatest importance. The manager who undertakes to produce such changes acts like a teacher. He guides the employees to engage in behaviours that will help the organization achieve its objectives. When the employees are late for work, lazy, disobey the rules or engage in any type of dysfunctional behaviour, the manager attempts to teach behaviours of functional nature. Further, if the employee
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is performing well, he gives the employee feedback and also rewards to strengthen such desirable behaviour.
You may understand that individuals enter an organization with a host of learned attitudes and behaviours. Their job performance is a function of their learned experiences. Learning is a continuous experience for employees. It is because of learning, employers recruit people with college degrees or those with job experience. The employer presumes that not only education or experience provides learning, but that learning will lead to higher job performance.
Learning Theories
In an organization, employees have to learn and practice productive work behaviours. The manager’s task is to provide sufficient learning experiences to employees in an environment that will facilitate learning process and promote desired behaviours. Training prepares employees to meet the challenges of the job, for which incentives are to be provided to learn and practice right behaviours. The following are the important theories of learning.
Classical Conditioning
Classical conditioning is the process by which individuals learn to link the information from a neutral stimulus to a stimulus that causes a response. This response may not be under an individual’s conscious control. Pavlov, in his experiments, hanged some meat in front of dogs. This meat is unconditioned stimulus or unlearned stimulus. The dogs responded to this stimulus by salivating. This kind of response was instinctive or unconditioned. Afterwards Pavlov started to ring a bell at the same time when meat was offered. Ringing the bell without offer of meat was not connected to any responses. However, by ringing the bell every time when meat was offered, Pavlov established a relationship between the two stimuli that is the bell and the meat. With the continuation of the process, the ringing of the bell alone acted like a stimulus to evoke the response of salivating even without presentation of meat. As a result, the bell became a conditioned stimulus leading to conditioned response.
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Operant Conditioning
B.F. Skinner coined the term operant conditioning to refer to a process by which individuals learn voluntary behaviour. Voluntary behaviours are called operant because they operate or have some influence on the environment. Learning occurs from the consequences of behaviour, and many employee work behaviours are operant behaviours. As a matter of fact, most behaviours in everyday life are forms of operant behaviour. Managers are interested in operant behaviours because they can influence the results of such behaviours. On the basis of the direct relationship between the consequences and behaviour, the management can identify the relationship and try to modify the behaviour. That is how the behaviour can be controlled by manipulating its consequences. Two principles guide this relationship.
-- The behaviour that results in positive rewards is likely to be repeated and behaviour with negative consequences is likely to be extinguished.
-- Based on such consequences, the behaviour can be predicted and controlled.
Therefore, some consequences can be used to increase the recurrence of desired behaviour and some other consequences can be used to decrease the recurrence of undesired behaviour.
Principle of Reinforcement
We understand that some behaviours are strengthened by the process of reinforcement. Reinforcer may be any stimulus that prompts a behaviour to be repeated or stopped. Managements expect that the employee should behave in a desirable manner in the organization and avoid undesirable behaviour. By the appropriate use of reinforcers, the organizations are able to maintain or increase the probability of behaviours like quality oriented performance, wise decision making, regular attendance and punctuality and so on. Some reinforcers work by their application to a situation whereas other reinforcers work by their removal from this situation.
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Positive Reinforcement
Positive reinforcement is provided by offering rewards for desired behaviours. Such rewards should be powerful and durable so as to increase the probability of occurrence of desirable behaviour. Money, as you understand, is the most powerful reinforcement for positive behaviour since money can be used for a number of other purposes. Some other positive reinforcers are recognition for good performance, challenging task, participation in decision making and so on. As individuals have different motivations of performance, positive reinforcers should be individually tailored with a view to facilitate the repetition of desired behaviour. That means reinforcer must be valued by the employee. For example, money would be a less reinforcer who values praise for his performance more. The reward must be directly linked with behaviour so that the higher the performance of an employee, the grater would be the reward.
Negative Reinforcement
In negative reinforcement, an unpleasant event that precedes the employee behaviour is removed when the desired behaviour occurs. This procedure increases the likelihood of the desired behaviour to follow. Negative reinforcement is sometimes confused with punishment because both use unpleasant events to influence behaviour. However, negative reinforcement is used to increase the frequency of a desired behaviour, whereas punishment is used to decrease the frequency of an undesired behaviour. Managers frequently use negative reinforcement when an employee hasn’t done something that is desired.
Omission
Omission is the removal of all reinforcing events. While reinforcement increases the frequency of a desirable behaviour, omission decreases the frequency and eventually extinguishes an undesirable behaviour. Managers use omission to reduce undesirable employee behaviours that obstruct achievement of organizational goals. The omission procedure consists of three steps.
1.identifying the behaviour to be reduced or eliminated,
2.identifying the reinforcer that maintains the behaviour, and
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3. stopping the reinforcer.
Omission is a useful technique for reducing and eventually eliminating behaviours that disrupt normal workflow.
Punishment
Punishment is an unpleasant event that follows a behaviour and decreases its frequency. As in positive reinforcement, a punishment may include a specific antecedent that cues the employee that a consequence will follow a specific behaviour. While a positive consequence of reinforcement encourages the frequency of a desired behaviour, a consequence of punishment decreases the frequency of an undesired behaviour.
Organizations typically use several types of unpleasant events to punish individuals. They may be a wage cut, a suspension without pay, a demotion, or a transfer. The severe punishment is the dismissing an employee for failure to perform. In general, organizations use punishments of unpleasant nature sparingly for cases of serious behavioural problems.
It may be kept in mind that punishment should be used as a lost resort. The use of punishment should be limited to those undesirable behaviours that cause a significant damage to the organizational operations. It may also be remembered that punishment should not lead to hostility to such an extent of making solution more harmful than the problem itself.
Punishment may cause undesirable emotional reactions. An employee who has been reprimanded for a mistake may react with anger toward the manager and the organization. Such reactions may lead to retaliatory behaviour harmful to the organization. Sabotage, you remember, typically is a result of a punishment-oriented management system. It is clear that punishment leads to short-term suppression of the undesirable behaviour, rather than to its elimination. Further, the punished individual may develop a tendency of avoiding the situation. High absenteeism is a form of avoidance and quitting is the final form of escape.
You should also note that punishment suppresses employee initiative and flexibility. Overusing punishment produces apathetic employees, who are not assets to an organization. Sustained punishment can also lead to low self-esteem. Low self-esteem, in turn, undermines the employee’s selfconfidence, which is necessary for performing most of the jobs.
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